This drama from playwright Isley Lynn and actor Libby Rodliffe is a dark comedy about Bea (Rodliffe), a young millennial who it rapidly transpires is working three jobs, plus dog sitting for the (off travelling) pal whose flat she is staying in for free.
Much of the early humour simply comes from the eye watering logistical details of how Bea pulls off the balancing act of holding down a full time PA job while also working as the concierge for a dodgy block of luxury flats while also needing to pick up her friend’s dog by 7pm every night (she also does some out of hours data entry).
The cleverest thing about Lynn and Rodliffe’s script is how it only slowly sneaks up on you to why Bea is actually doing all this. One’s immediate assumption is, cossie lives: Bea is a young(ish) person trying to get by in London, London is very expensive, look at the exaggerated lengths she’s gone to in order to get by, hahaha, not especially imaginative.
But of course somebody paying no rent doesn’t need three jobs, and over the course of ‘Jobsworth’ we discover how detached Bea has become from her friends, who are living normal lives without her.
It transpires that she has done something very foolish in order to bail out somebody who has done something wildly irresponsible, and Bea has taken the absurd gamble that she can make it all better by working three jobs and not paying rent.
To some degree it’s a story about generational conflict: a complacency in Boomers vs an anxiety in Millennials, and how damaging mutual incomprehension can be.
Really, though, it transcends generational specifics: at core it’s a play about the foolish belief that it is possible to make everything okay for other people if we give enough of ourselves. I think it’s an impulse most of us have had to a lesser degree: Lynn and Rodliffe (who puts in an endearingly world weary performance) smartly push this to a painful extreme.
A fine, funny and empathetic play that takes great delight in slowly revealing its depths.